COMPELLING LETTER ABOUT LINDBERGH IN AIRPORT NAME CONTROVERSY

Mira Mesa residents Michael and Victoria Barzilli see discrimination differently than many of us do. They’ve seen it up close.

In World War II, the Nazis sent Victoria’s paternal grandparents to the Auschwitz concentration camp and shot her maternal grandfather’s first wife and their daughter. Half a century later, some of Michael’s teenage baseball teammates spray-painted a swastika on his family’s garage.

Such stories came to mind when the couple learned about the anti-Semitic views of aviator Charles Lindbergh, the namesake of San Diego’s airport.

The discovery propelled them into action, and they launched a campaign in November to change Lindbergh Field’s name. The effort didn’t go very far, but I obtained one of their letters last week as I wrote a column on the fate of the San Diego airport’s well-known Lindbergh mural, which airport officials may destroy but which I and most readers want to keep.

“I think once you’re a hero, you’re always a hero,” one reader told me about Lindbergh.

But is that so? Shouldn’t we consider both Lindbergh’s aviation accomplishments and his anti-Semitism? And how would we even weigh them?

Maybe the Barzillis are right, I thought. Maybe the mural shouldn’t go back up on the airport’s commuter terminal despite the public’s outpouring of support.

In Lindbergh’s most controversial speech — in 1941 — he said: “Instead of agitating for war, Jews in this country should be opposing it in every way, for they will be the first to feel its consequences. Their greatest danger to this country lies in their large ownership and influence in our motion pictures, our press, our radio and our government.”

After the speech, a PBS biography on Lindbergh noted, “Civic and corporate organizations cut all ties and affiliations with him. His name was even removed from the water tower in his hometown of Little Falls, Minn.”

The panels making up the San Diego airport’s Lindbergh mural had been taken down for building repairs for several months when the Barzillis learned about the aviator’s past from Victoria’s dad. The state of the mural and a major airport renovation spurred the couple to write a letter to airport officials.

“We kind of thought maybe this is the time to say something, because if you don’t say something now, then it’s going to be too late,” Michael told me.

Their letter documents Lindbergh’s belief in eugenics, or the superiority of one race over another, and Lindbergh’s rise and fall as an American hero. He gained fame for making the first solo nonstop flight from New York to Paris in 1927 in a plane built in San Diego. Then he faced heavy criticism for promoting appeasement and isolationism during World War II.

To make their case, the Barzillis cited online research and quoted remarks that Lindbergh made in diaries, articles and speeches, such as this one: “Whenever the Jewish percentage of total population becomes too high, a reaction seems to invariably occur. It is too bad because a few Jews of the right type are, I believe, an asset to any country.”

Their letter also featured this quote from President Franklin Roosevelt to his treasury secretary in May 1940: “If I should die tomorrow, I want you to know this, I am absolutely convinced Lindbergh is a Nazi.”

The Barzillis signed off by describing Lindbergh as “unquestionably un-American.”

“As two direct descendants of Holocaust survivors, we are deeply saddened that our home city has an airport named after Charles Lindbergh,” the couple wrote. “To remove that stain on our city would mean so much to the Jewish community and would send a clear message to our citizens and our youth that being of moral character is important.”

Our city.

When they wrote the letter, Michael had lived in San Diego for 20 years, and Victoria had been here for more than two since they married. Now, they’re moving to Los Angeles to have children and be close to their family. She’s taught preschool there since Jan. 3. Michael, an information technology professional, will join her soon.

They said their departure has nothing to do with the failed letter campaign, although Victoria is still disillusioned that it didn’t catch on.

“One accomplishment is not indicative of who you are as a person,” she told me. “I feel very strongly about teaching children to be kind and nurturing who they are as an individual, and teaching them to be warm and respectful and patient with other people. To find out that the city doesn’t have the same sentiment is a little disheartening.”

The couple is glad they sent the letter.

“At least those people are now aware of it,” Michael said. “Maybe they’re going to subconsciously or consciously scale back.”

Or maybe they’re going to do nothing.

Complaints like the Barzillis’ about Lindbergh’s past are rare, said airport spokeswoman Diana Lucero. She shared their letter with me only after I pressed her on the types of complaints the airport has received.

She also shared a letter from the San Diego County Regional Airport Authority that thanked the couple for “sharing your perspective” but emphasized there are no plans to change the airport’s name.

“The official name of the airport, normally used in the aviation industry, is San Diego International Airport,” board chairman Robert Gleason wrote in that note. “It is referred to as Lindbergh Field, or San Diego International Airport at Lindbergh Field, by some local San Diegans and by some in the media. However, that is not the official name of the airport, nor are there any signs at the airport containing that name.”

So what is the connection? Gleason laid it out for the Barzillis. The airport is near where Ryan Airlines built and tested Lindbergh’s famous airplane, the Spirit of St. Louis. Moreover, Lindbergh gave his name to San Diego’s airport in 1928 after voters agreed to fund and build it.

Victoria called the response flippant. Michael said it was a brush-off.

“Which one is it?” he remembers thinking. “Are you guys defending Lindbergh and you’re saying that you’re proud that he’s this hero that we’re putting up on a pedestal, or are you saying that he’s not part of the airport? You can’t be both, right?”

I’m not sure. The airport authority letter certainly reads like a mixed message, but my takeaway wasn’t negative. This isn’t a simple situation.

In the end, I still say the airport should restore or re-create “Lucky/Spirit,” the mural that sparked so much of my interest in Lindbergh.

We — and history — need to remember Lindbergh for his amazing aviation achievements and his abhorrent comments on Germany and Jews.

Here’s why we should keep Lindbergh’s name and mural where they’ve been: No one knows better than Jewish families like the Barzillis, like mine, that we must never forget the past. And no one knows better than American families that we must soar with the better angels of our nature.